Dust Bowl – American Stories, the new album from Grant Maloy Smith

July 2422:152017

The Best Top Billboard Album About the Worst of Times

NASHVILLE, TN – Enormous dust storms blew across the Plains of America in the 1930s, blanketing everything with dirt, killing crops and livestock and sickening countless people. American Roots recording artist Grant Maloy Smith brings back the trials and tribulations of those dark days, but he has turned them into a “masterpiece” according to the music press. Three years in the making, the album “Dust Bowl – American Stories” (Suburban Cowboy Records) is kicking up quite a storm of its own, reaching the Billboard top 10 in its second week on the Americana/Folk charts.

No Depression magazine, the unofficial “bible” of roots music, raved: “…Lyrics and music as potent as Woody Guthrie … Grant has written a heartland masterpiece … a reminder of the darker period of Bob Dylan…and it’s that good, that memorable…”

In 13 songs, Smith tells personal stories of how the Dust Bowl affected ordinary people. In “Old Black Roller,” a farmer both fears and defies the approaching storm. “Lily of the Valley” is a poignant song about young love on the prairie. In “Isht a Lhampko” (Choctaw for “Have Strength”), Native Americans stand strong against the Dust Bowl, having already survived the Trail of Tears almost exactly 100 years earlier.

The Dust Bowl forced roughly 2 million people to flee theirhomes in search of work. Smith celebrates their strength in the upbeat ballad “I Come From America,” the first single being released to radio. “These people – these Americans – were largely unwanted wherever they went. They were paid substandard wages, and rousted from camp to camp as they tried to make ends meet.

Expressive Original Songs Steeped in the Dirt & Reality of the Dust Bowl-Depression EraNo Depressionhttp://nodepression.com/album-review/expressive-original-songs-steeped-dirt-reality-dust-bowl-depression-era